Day 15: Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, when I was a little brat, I was watching my dad make cocktails for the customers at the restaurant. He told me that the drink he was making was called Mai Tai and that it contained a lot of alcohol.

Once upon a time, a few hours ago, I was reminded of this story and ordered it when I saw it on the menu at a bar I went to for someone’s birthday. It’s a really good drink. Mmmmmm, yum. And for a while, I thought my body didn’t get too affected by alcohol so easily… until I stood up. Hah. Walking down the stairs was an adventure.

So when you read this entry…if anything seems slightly out of place, there’s a reason.

Okay, so, realistically speaking, if I was going back to Soka, I know I wouldn’t start classes for another month. So, technically, I shouldn’t feel like I need to be in class.

But I do.

I am SOO ready for classes to start. Well, technically, they have in 4 out of the 5 universities, but I’m only taking one class out of those 4 and classes are on Wednesday and Fridays, and I get to miss Wednesday’s class because I have a field trip with the film track I’m taking and I have to get my visa stuff figured out. I’m hungry for academics. …and I don’t officially start for another 2 weeks. Gyah!

When I was at this birthday gathering, everyone was talking about how they had class, but it ended up being canceled because the professors never showed up. Apparently, that happens quite often here. I was able to share a lot of the same feelings as other people also. The entire group I was with tonight [about 12 people in total] has all gone clubbing and dancing and stuff, but they weren’t all about parties. They were really academically-driven also, which made me happy. I wasn’t the only one.

It’s true though, because we can’t get jobs here and we don’t have all the club activities that we would usually be involved in, so we have more time to focus on academics and other things. I’m glad. Tonight was, again, fun. There were a lot more people, but they were all a different group of people that I haven’t met. It was fun. Spread the Soka love. Actually, a few of the guys in group reminded me of guys, personality-wise and appearance-wise, in my class at Soka. I was awestruck at the uncanny resemblances.

Aside from that, a friend and I planned a trip around Recoleta, but most things were closed, except the cemetery, so we went there. We got to see Eva Peron’s tomb. I didn’t notice the last time I was here, but the tombs here are so extravagant, I swear I could live in one. That’s about all we did, plus walk around Buenos Aires Design [which had a lot of the furniture I wanted to buy for my future house], and then we split to take naps, and then reconvene at 10:30pm to go to the bar for the birthday thing.

I think after today, I felt that we live in a small world. Apparently, there’s a girl in my program who is the granddaughter of John McCain. Yes. The John McCain, running for president. How did I find this out? My friend, over lunch, asked me what my political stance was, and all I said was I’m all for the democrats. And then she asked me why not McCain, and I told her I had just heard many not-so-pleasant things about him, especially his comment on the Supreme Court ruling about habeus corpus.

But, yes. Once upon a time, the world was once thought to be big, but then civilized, high-tech societies happened, and the world became indeed small, where connections are easier to make than ever and where you realize that there are a lot more interesting people near you than you think.

Yes. Once upon a time, two seconds ago, the world shrunk ever so small.

Once upon a time.

PS, if you haven’t noticed, a lot of my posts are back-dated so the days and the dates correlate.

PPS, I’ve written a Capstone’s worth of blogs. Based on my statistics, if you write 1-2 pages [single-spaced] everyday, you can finish a ~40-page Capstone in a little less than 20 days. Good to know, right?